Last Night In Alberta
by KateEals
Summary: An interpretation of the night an RCMP officer basically saved Jules' life as she described in Run to Me. Bit of a "It's a Wonderful Life" theme; Christmas gift to all my followers and readers! Merry Christmas!
1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note: **Okay, so the genesis of this story came from the fact that I wanted to write (ek-hemmm, up-date) a story as a Christmas gift to all the lovely followers I've left hanging for like three months now as life has been kicking me in the butt. I had some writer's block until 4 am this morning when I was running before work and thinking about how the Jules episode of Season 5 was unfulfilling in that it didn't really tell us anything we didn't already know, nor answer any of our REAL questions about her past. This is a sort of an _It's A Wonderful Life_ (haha! Christmas THEMED) piece of my interpretation of how the story she told about the RCMP officer might have fleshed out in conjunction with what a lot of others and I have speculated to have happened with her mom and her. I haven't been on this site that much for months, so I don't know if anyone's tackled this yet. Also, I'm lazy and have created my own head-cannon, so the names and back-stories of her four brothers remain the same as in my story _Glasgow_, although their ages are a lot closer together. And if you're wondering why I was running at 4 am, the more operant question is why I was working at 6 am on Christmas Eve.

I don't own or have rights to Flashpoint, Jane Eyre, or The Who.

Last Night in Alberta

Part 1

Teenage Julianna Callaghan fake sneezed as she cracked open the third can in the six-pack she'd pilfered from her father's copious beer stash. She smirked at her third successful act of 'destroying the evidence' of her indiscretion as she thought about her father's preference for cans over bottles: more economical, portable, quieter when he snuck them out to his tractor in the middle of the day to drown his sorrows, which he'd never let his guard down enough to share or reveal to his children, in solitude; despair is a weakness, sin to feel or spread to others.

As if they didn't all know.

About Any of it.

All of it.

The crop this year was sure to be far inferior to even the lowest of lows on the old Callaghan ledger.

Jules internally chastised herself for even worrying about someone hearing her in her act of rebellion out on the Callaghans' rickety old porch on this warm summer's night. Michael and Collin were away taking extra classes for University to avoid the world they all perpetually existed in in the Callaghan home now; Pat was probably out screwing some co-ed to deal with his 'pain,' while her father was up in his room 'recovering' from his latest mid-day date with the bottle. Sure, Seamus could have heard her shenanigans, but he was most likely sequestered in his room memorizing The Gospel according to John and thinking about new ways to extend his existence as a selective mute in preparation for what would predictably be a vow of silence.

Annoying and pathetic, all of them.

Well, she thought to herself with a jerk of her head to the side, not Seamus. Seamus had always been destined to be a sweet, quiet man who kept to himself and avoided all confrontation while he had the faith to keep the world in perspective. The events of the past year had only seemed to exacerbate those qualities.

And at least he was coping, found a way to exist and belong within himself and the environment around him. He was coping in a way that wouldn't be considered socially deviant like the other two lost souls whom now dared reside in this house rendered haunted.

Seamus would survive with a semblance of himself.

Seamus would live, not as a ghost, but as a man.

Jules herself knew that she just didn't fit in. Not in this broken family and certainly not in this small, cow-poke town. Maybe not even in this life all together.

There was, even in this dark time of perpetual night, always that potential, a potential for life. But this potential had to be force fed into existence through natural talent, hard work and overall sense of purpose, belonging. It was in this that she was lacking. The whole of this equation could never become greater than the sum of its parts simply because not all of those parts were available for utilization; thus, all were rendered useless.

Unrealized.

Unrealized potential. Wasted potential as her gym teacher, dictator, Mr. Darcy (Jules smirked yet again at herself at the thought of how the bald-headed bastard was definitely not debonair, but had the surly a-hole part down pat) always said to her when she was slacking in Phys. Ed. ever since he'd seen her perform a perfect back-flip while showing off and horsing around in some 'waste of potential' act in the school yard. Always said she could have been the next Mary Lou Retton if she just applied her natural talent.

Yeah, right.

As if she'd ever be able to translate one simple trick her brother Collin had taught her at eight years old, in a different time, a different era of their lives, into some life of athletic glory. It just didn't fit.

She wouldn't fit.

Couldn't fit. Not anymore.

She might have been 'wasting her potential,' but somehow she still didn't even fit in with those other kids labeled with the same moniker. She'd tried, gone to more of their sweat-hog, stoner parties than she could count. At some point she'd always found herself popping in The Who's rock opera songs on _Who's Next_, the trashed youth around her first rocking out to _Won't Get Fooled Again_ followed by _Baba O'Riley_, never realizing the significance of either song in the context of their own lives.

And this is why she would never belong with them. At least she was consciously aware of her wasted existence. Knowledge and cognizance would always separate her from the self-detonating masses.

And yet she still didn't fit in anywhere else. Not since her Mother—

And thus with a life lacking in belonging, she'd felt her life lacked a purpose, direction. Well, not all direction. She saw, so often now, even when she wasn't consciously trying to think about that option, one direction. This was a direction far beyond the minor social deviance she'd been experimenting with as of late. It was one towards either total freedom or total loss depending on one's state of mind and perspective.

As she sipped the last dregs of that third beer, she thought about that assignment Mrs. Carter had made them do in English class: write an essay about what you would do if you only had five days left to live. While the rest of the class had taken the trite and expected direction of this morbid task and schemed ways in which they would amorphously and unimaginatively 'live life to the fullest,' Jules had taken an undeserved C for her only slightly sarcastic track on taking matters into her own hands, not letting some per-determined master of destiny dictate when she would expire—

-She looked down at the scare of a hesitation mark on the inside of her wrist. Weakness. Failure.

Contemplation was over-rated.

She shot-gunned the last three beers of the set.

Now deeming herself sufficiently inebriated, she lightly jingled her father's truck keys (which, of course, she'd swiped at the same time as the six-pack) and stood up to venture the short distance to the parked vehicle. She'd trained for this kind of heavy lifting. The stoner parties she'd been to had been her greatest matches.

Not more than five miles, or so she guessed in her slightly sloshed brain, out from the city of Medicine Hat limits, she swore to herself.

"Damn-it!" she shouted lightly, her first truly audible words in the past day.

A set of bright flashing and lights and a siren beckoned her to pull to the side of the road.

For some reason she couldn't resist the call of the law.

**Additional Note: **As you can see, this is probably going to be a two part-er. I just wanted to get this out to all of you tonight. Hope you enjoyed!

Merry Christmas!

-Eals


	2. Chapter 2

**Author's Note:** Thanks to everyone who read and reviewed the first installment of this little story. Sorry it took so long to get this second part out; I find it easier to write dramatic inner turmoil than dialogue, because I'm always almost mortally afraid the dialogue will come out pretentious or sappy. Humorous dialogue is an altogether different story, though. That seems to right itself : )

I don't own or have rights to Flashpoint, Leave it to Beaver, The Trouble with Angels, Vertigo, or anything else that might be copyrighted in this piece.

Last Night in Alberta

Part 2

As those radiant lights reflected off of her amber eyes, she knew that she'd been wishing for something from them; or perhaps, she'd been wishing for something in general when she set out on the road.

It wasn't like it was the first time she'd ever stolen her father's truck. She thought of, now cringed, at the thought of all the times she'd swiped Dad's truck to joy ride, rebel, whatever the Hell it was called to take a ride solely for the purpose to forget.

Everything.  
Dad wasn't there, and he seemed to forget Mom's—

"I have it," Jules began in a sarcastic tone as she rolled down the truck window for the approaching female RCMP officer. "But I left it in my other pants," Jules finished in explanation of her eventual lack of a driver's license. She gave a Cleaver Era 'shucks' shrug to emphasize her misstep.

"Really?" the officer asked with just as much sarcasm, her eyes flashing towards Jules' slightly shaky hands, prompting Jules to grasp them on the steering wheel for stability.

Jules took a second to nod 'yes' to this question as she evaluated the situation enough to see that the officer was alone.

When the RCMP officer leaned towards Jules' open window, she paused to read the troubled teenager's face. It was obvious to Jules from the stern, yet compassionate set of the cop's face that she had discerned that not only was Jules not old enough to even have a learner's permit license, but that was also in what grown-ups tended to stereotypically call a 'dark place' in trite television after school specials. The whole thought of being lumped into such a banal, simplistic categorization of the adolescent condition made Jules want to gag.

"What are you really doing out here tonight, sweetheart?" the officer inquired with concern, confirming Jules' initial reading of her. They were all the same, Jules thought. All these bleeding heart adults with their wisdom and compassion thinking they knew her, her situation, how she thought and felt, all because they'd read some case file or dealt with some other teen who'd previously been 'wasting their potential' like everyone was telling her she was now.

She wasn't a number, statistic.

She wasn't a case file that could be likened to other previous case files for comparison and analysis.

These people didn't know her. They couldn't possibly ever know her.

Trying her hardest not to scoff or roll her eyes in response to the well-intentioned, but still ultimately condescending question, Jules flashed her brightest, yet fakest smile ever. "Well, I don't get cable at my house, so I have to make my own fun," she managed to answer with a straight face, hoping she had successfully concealed her true intentions for this night, intentions she was wasn't even willing to admit to herself let alone some anonymous police officer.

The female RCMP officer narrowed her eyes at Jules and nodded her head. "And I'm sure that story is ENTIRELY on the up and up…" she replied sarcastically and trailed off as she used her flashlight to search the truck's cab slowly, ending her examination with the beam catching Jules' hands on the steering wheel. The beam of light inched up a fraction to capture her wrists.

Jules instinctively reached to pull the sleeves of her leather jacket, a fashion accessory far too overzealous for this warm summer night, down to the palms of her hands. The coat held a different purpose in the current cyclical climate.

The cop sighed out a breath and moved the streak of light away from Jules' person entirely. "I'm guessing that license you left in your 'other pants' wasn't used to buy the beer I smell."

Jules remained stoic and faced forward before turning her head to eye the cop with a steely gaze. She said nothing, allowing her eyes to convey her response: You can't scare me. You can't hurt me. Nothing could ever scare or hurt me worse than what I already know.

The officer held the teenager's stare as she reached into the cab and removed the keys from the ignition effortlessly and to Jules' slight surprise. "Stay here. I'll be right back," she commanded.

In the rearview mirror, Jules watched the cop walk back to her cruiser and began to talk to someone whom until this point Jules had not noticed was seated in the shadows of the passenger seat of the car. Nodding her head, the cop backed away from the car as a male officer excited the passenger side in order to get behind the driver's wheel. Within seconds, the lady officer was waving the other officer off as he drove away with their cruiser and she began to stride back to the Callaghan truck with a tall thermos in her left hand.

Jules had no idea what in the Hell was going on.

She guessed that was the story of her life though.

"Scoot over, kid," the officer ordered as she opened the truck's door and got behind the wheel. Too stunned by the events that had just transpired, Jules directly complied with the command.  
"You're not taking me to jail?" Jules asked without even trying to conceal her confusion.

"No," the officer answered curtly. "I wouldn't want to add any credence to your predictable bad-ass street cred."

Jules scoffed for a second. She did have to admit to herself that that would have been the only possible good out-come from being thwarted in her previous unacknowledged plans this night. She found she was a bit disappointed.

"My partner is going to get an early breakfast and will pick me up later. I'm driving you home. That is," the officer paused to turn her head and frown at the teenager beside her, "once you grace me with your name and address."

"Kim Novak," Jules answered with a smart-alec tone in imitation of a wise-ass character in a movie she'd once seen.

"Glad to hear you're a fan of _Vertigo_, but I'll take your real name," the cop matched her snark for snark.

"Callaghan," Jules answered. "Jules Callaghan."

The officer nodded as they drove towards the ambient light of Medicine Hat.

She stared down into the final dregs of the cup of coffee the RCMP officer had so graciously given to her from the personal thermos Jules had seen her take from the police cruiser before the male officer drove off with towards his 'early breakfast.' Jules had to admit, at least to herself, she'd enjoyed the hot beverage more than she was generally accustomed to, probably because the dirty water swill the Callaghans usually made was practically undrinkable. She could get used to this cream, no sugar, concoction.

That was if she decided to—

It had been almost an hour since she and, to that point, still completely anonymous officer had arrived back at the Callaghan farmhouse. But once they'd stepped inside the emotionally haunted confines of the structure, the light from within the house illuminated the officer's name-tag that had until now been hidden in the darkness of night, revealing the identity she had until now neglected to share to be that of 'Fallon.' Having never offered such an identity freely, Jules still felt anonymity cloud the officer in obscurity, which remained a bizarre, distant comfort.

If Jules had been stunned to find that the cop had no intention of taking her to jail or even writing her up for her decidedly dangerous and highly illegal indiscretion, she was even more flabbergasted to learn that, at least for the time being, the officer had no intention of leaving the kitchen table she'd immediately sat down at the moment she and Jules had entered the house through the back kitchen door. She'd wanted to talk.

The very thought brought the return of a gag-reflex to Jules. Know-it-all old people and their desire to impart wisdom on the young and helpless.

Thus, they'd spent the last hour sipping coffee in virtual silence. Jules was just waiting for Fallon to break the proverbial ice.

The cop emptied the last of the contents of the thermos equally into hers and Jules' cups and sighed. "You're obviously a pretty sharp girl, Jules. You know I'm not just hanging out drinking coffee with you at 4 in the morning for my own health, or the inspiration for a power ballad." She raised her thermos cap cup in a sign of sarcastic 'cheers' before continuing. "You and I both know you didn't get half sauced and go for a leisurely country drive at 2 am on a Tuesday for nothing." She gave time for this revelation to sink in before looking at Jules sternly. "And I will sit hear all day and all night with you until you tell me what's going on."

Jules couldn't help herself: she snorted and smiled derisively while shaking her head. She had no intention of letting this policewoman be seen in her house with her by her father and brothers, especially not her father.

Conscious of keeping her voice down so as not to wake her father or Seamus (Pat's car was still gone when they'd gotten back; she wondered which 'lucky' girl was getting his 'special attention' for the full night), Jules responded with unconcealed venom. "What makes you think me talking to you is gonna resolve anything?"

The officer pursed her lips and nodded her head. "Yeah, I get it, Jules. You think I'm like every other lame grown-up who thinks they can just talk at you and get some hoped for result." She paused to shake her head for a moment. "But I'm guessing it's not talking at you need right now. I'm guessing you just need someone to listen."

She sat back in her chair with her arms folded over her chest. "So that's what I'm here for right now. I give you free license to say whatever you want, get everything off your chest." She shrugged. "And if I have some thoughts of my own to share in the course of everything, I won't be too shy in sharing them."

Jules rolled her eyes. It seemed this Fallon was just like every other adult who'd ever tried to talk to her before.

The officer sighed. "Look, I get that your cynicism is far from removed by that little diatribe of mine, but I'm serious. I will. Not. Talk. At. You. Tonight."

With this person's insistence that she was different, Jules could feel the anger and rage she'd been boiling up ever since her Mom had left them, her, ever since her world had imploded and she'd been assumed to become that stereotypical angry young woman that filled TV shows and literature. Angry that assumptions that she was just like every other troubled teen would force her into a group of belonging were unfounded. Angry at how freaking much she WISHED she COULD fit into that group of angry troubled youth because at least then she would belong to something.

This anger, rage, simmered and seethed to the surface, waiting to explode.

And then she couldn't hold it in any longer, lest she spontaneously combust.

"You DON'T KNOW ME! You DON'T KNOW what I NEED!"

"Not sayn' I do," Fallon countered her calmly.

The cop's calm demeanor just angered Jules even more. How could she be so calm while Jules felt like the earth was quaking beneath her? How could she be so calm while everything good about life was either seeping away or imploding out of existence around her?

"I hate EVERYTHING," Jules answered more softly, but emphatically with an undercurrent of the purest rage to ever touch her soul. "I hate all the kids at school who have perfect lives and actual futures, but still decide to throw them away for the next kegger and some manufactured teenage angst. I hate the people of this town who think they can make my family's lives better with a hug and a home-made pie. I hate all the 'professionals' who think they know what I'm going through and think they have some easy formula for making everything normal again." She paused to inhale a deep breath. "I hate this world for making my Mom the way she was. I hate that I wasn't a strong enough reason to make her stay. I hate that I'm not strong enough to live without her…" Jules trailed off as she felt tears of fury begin to well-up behind her eyes.

"I don't belong. I can't belong," Jules whispered words she'd never been able to speak aloud to anyone before. "So all I can do is hate everything."

Having made her confession to this complete stranger, Jules sat silently and began to fully absorb them herself. She couldn't believe she'd had such a complete and naked outburst, in her own kitchen with her father and brother presumably sleeping right above her, no less. She'd never expected to ever admit all of what she had been thinking and feeling as of late to anyone, especially not to someone who remained nearly totally anonymous to her.

But then she knew that it was this anonymity itself that allowed to purge her innermost thoughts and feeling of rage and defeat. There was no way she would have ever been able to tell someone she knew, someone she would have been automatically predisposed to postulate from her own previous understanding and relationship with the person that they would ever begin to contemplate and understand what it was exactly that was inside her. What it was exactly that was holding her prisoner in her own thoughts and rendering her the 'waste of potential' Mr. Darcy and so many of her other teachers constantly accused her of being.

They wouldn't understand that potential and the desire to achieve it was an empty word, idea, without belonging. It was a simple matter, though Jules was not currently able to articulate it, of Maslow's Hierarchy.

The officer let the silence that fell upon them after Jules' little dissertation linger as she seemed to allow Jules the space she mentally needed after her outburst and to formulate her own thoughts into coherence.

After a few minutes past, Fallon leaned forward on the table towards the teenager. "I think you didn't want to tell anyone about this complete animosity you're feeling towards everything because of one of two reasons," she began as she held up her right fist. "One," she shook her fist with outstretched thumb, "you didn't think anyone would really listen to you, or two," she pointed her pointer finger, "you didn't think anyone would understand. Is that fair?" the officer asked her opinion.

Jules nodded in reply. "More or less." She couldn't resist adding a measure of snark to her answer and added, "I'm also not too peachy keen on diving into my own personal psyche cesspool."

"That's colorful language, Jules. It's a wonder they don't commission you to paint a verbal mural," the officer seemed unable to restrain herself either.

Jules found herself half smiling. She found she liked this woman despite herself; she seemed real, genuine, like she wasn't putting on airs or wearing the mask most middle aged people did when they talked to teenagers.

"I can't guarantee that anyone will listen when you try to talk to them," the cop continued back on task, "but I can tell you for sure and from personal experience that you have a much higher probability of that happening if you actually try to talk to begin with."

"Wow," Jules began sardonically, "you must have taken math in college."

"Quite, you!" Fallon replied with a half-smile smirk to signify the irony of her jest in the context of her previous remark.

Jules felt a snort of mirth escaping from her lips.

"I think you'll find being such a wise-ass isn't all it's cut out to be," Fallon told her with a look of mock admonishment. "It's just a defense mechanism that separates you from the world." She shrugged and attempted to maintain a straight face. "At least that's what some people tell me."

Though Jules was cynically inclined to believe that the cop was merely pandering to her by speaking to her at her level, she found she for once didn't head this inclination. She found it comforting in some weird way that the officer was bothering to communicate with her in such a familiar manner.

"My second point," the cop continued, "was about understanding; you figure it's not worth your time to tell anyone what's going on with you because you don't think they'll ever be able to understand." She nodded with these words and looked into Jules' eyes for acceptance of this assumption. "But, Jules, what if the real issue is your own lack of understanding?"

Jules frowned and narrowed her eyes before she shook her head quickly. Here came the big wisdom speech she had been bracing herself for; she hoped it wouldn't be as boring and useless as the previous philosophical tracts she'd had to endure.

"From where I sit here, and having been in your shoes not as long ago as you suspect," Jules raised an eyebrow that forced Fallon to frown, "I'm only in my thirties, smart-guy," she assured Jules wryly. "I can tell you from experience that I just don't think you understand what belonging really is."

"By all means, enlighten me, oh sage one," Jules whispered sardonically under her breath.

"Belonging isn't just some amorphous or unattainable Holy Grail," Fallon continued, ignoring Jules as if she had not spoken at all. "It's not something that's handed out to some people and refused to others. You have to be an active participant to feel it. You have to open yourself up and accept it rather than continue to shut people out of your life."

Jules scoffed at these words; the trite diatribe she'd suspected. "Right. So the reason I don't belong anywhere is not because everyone and everything has just left me behind, but because I refuse to 'let Jesus into my heart' or something?" she queried with distinct distain in her voice.

Fallon shrugged. "Guess that could help too, but no, that's not what I'm saying," she replied with an air of nonchalance. "What I'm sayin' is that you can go through your whole life feeling like a total outcast when in reality it was your own thinking that cast you out from everyone around you," she said more seriously.

As Jules continued to look incredulous of this sentiment, Fallon continued. "You may not feel like it, but you belong to all the people in your life, Jules. Even if they don't seem to understand you; even if they don't seem to care. Even if they don't show their love for you directly, you still belong to them, and they belong to you."

As Jules narrowed her eyes in contemplation of this notion, the officer leaned forward and reached across the table to place a hand on top of Jules', which was still wrapped around her coffee cup. "And you belong to your past just as much as you belong to your present and future." She nodded with sympathy and empathy in her eyes. "No matter what she did or where she went, you still belong to your mother. Once you accept that rather than push it away, and let yourself rage and resent whatever she did, you can start letting yourself accept that what you rage about is caused by your love for her." She lifted her hand to nudge up Jules' now down-cast chin, forcing her to look her in the eye. "And you belong to that love, Jules," she smiled reassuringly.

Despite herself and the indignation she'd perpetually felt for so long, Jules felt tears begin to flood to her eyes and swiftly lifted her hand from Fallon's to wipe the evidence of them and the emotion they engendered away from the officer's prying eyes. She thought how maybe this random cop was right; maybe what she needed to do to feel more human again was let herself fully embrace the pain her Mother's actions had caused her; maybe it was only after reaching that rock-bottom weariness that she'd allow herself to feel what could quite possibly be around her already.

Fallon reached out and grasped Jules' errant hand again, a stern, serious look rising to her face. "I'll tell you one thing for sure, Jules," she spoke clearly with absolute honesty and purpose, "I just met you, but I care about you." She paused to hold Jules' eyes for a moment. "So if you're ever in doubt about belonging, remember you at least belong somewhere to me."

Moved by the sheer sincerity in the RCMP woman's words, Jules felt herself nodding in understanding. She couldn't believe such an absolute stranger would bother to care so much about her, to sit with her through this rough night and explain universal truths she'd never allowed herself to contemplate for fear that they would only reinforce her wayward thoughts about her own desolate and lonely existence.

Jules jerked her head and broke her internal reverie of an epiphany at the sound of the stairs leading into the kitchen creaking softly under Monk-link reflexes.

Of course.

They'd been too loud.

"Great. Here comes Seamus…" Jules almost groaned while Fallon's face took on a slight look of confusion.

But to Jules' immense relief, her closest in age sibling merely silently walked into the kitchen, paused as he took in the sight of his little sister talking to a complete stranger in uniform, than filled his empty pint glass with tap water before turning on his heal in silence and kissing her on the top of the head in solitude with a smile before walking back towards the stairs.

A flat almost smile began to light Jules' face.

Seamus would be a good man.

Jules thought of how blessed she was to have a person, brother, like Seamus in her life; someone who loved and cared for her no matter how neglectful, or obtuse of his caring she was. She now saw that Seamus had figured everything she'd been thinking and feeling, but simply didn't have the words to make everything right for her. He loved and cared for her as any brother should, but never knew how to talk to her as an older, wiser sibling whom might hold advice.

Although she'd always played along with Mick, Col, and Pat, she'd always wished she'd had never played along with their games. Sure, she was the youngest, the only girl, she was used to them in making fun of her, making her a harder person that would only benefit her in later life.

But, poor Seamus. Solid, yet malleable and eventually breakable, Seamus.

She'd never thought about her own nor her other brothers' treatment of him.

Yet.

Yet Seamus, out of all of them, was the unbreakable one. He saw all, read all.

With this realization, Jules finally grasped how much she admired her older brother, how much she wished to learn to read people as well as he did. Not to read people in a cynical, sardonic sense as she tended to do, but with compassion and understanding as was his method.

Moved by sympathy, empathy, feelings that she hadn't found herself feeling since their Mother…expired, she spoke to him directly as he ventured back up the stairs. "Love ya, Bro," she proclaimed lightly using her old moniker for the young man.

Seamus smiled and looked at her directly in the eye for the first time since he'd inadvertently knocked her out of a tree when they were little. "Always, Jules."

His resulting smile and slight nod drove a spear of enlightenment through Jules' softening heart.

"See?" Fallon asked. "Sometimes you'll find you've always belonged." She paused for a moment to nod her head. "But maybe you were just too blind to see it."

Jules nodded and slightly grinned in acknowledgement of this now obvious truth.

Having made the point she was striving for and determining that Jules had finally been perceptive to it, the officer, whom to this point had still remained at least partially anonymous to Jules, rose and handed the teen her card. 'Officer Mary Fallon, Royal Canadian Mounted Police' it read in stark black ink above a set of phone numbers.

As Jules raised her sight from the card, Mary Fallon looked her straight in the eyes and declared with utmost sincerity, "If you ever feel like you don't belong again, if you're gonna run, you run straight to me, you hear me, Jules?"

Accepting the officer's sincerity and unspoken promise of protection from her own maladaptive thoughts and feelings, Jules nodded.

As the RCMP officer approached the kitchen door to leave the house, she turned on her heal and addressed Jules one last time. "And give your Daddy back his buck-knife."

Jules found herself non-consciously palming the bulge at the side of her hip under her overhanging shirt where the knife she'd to this point believed had remained hidden rested.

"It doesn't go with your outfit," Fallon smiled sarcastically, but with a twinkle in her eye as with these parting words she stepped out the door.

Jules felt the first genuine smile she'd had all year creep across her face as she took the knife off her belt. Placing it on the kitchen table where her father could collect it, she rose from her chair and looked out the window over the sink at the first rays of the rising sun.

Dawn was breaking.

The night was finally over.

**THE END**

**Additional Author's Note:** I wish Seamus was real and was my brother. Also, someone once told me that I walk softly like a Monk; I've always wanted to use that sentiment in a story, hahaha.

**Please leave a review** and let me know how this story was. I hope I was successful in keeping pretention and sap out of it!

Peace,

Eals


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